


Decorum

by DesertWillow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3166562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertWillow/pseuds/DesertWillow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hero of Ferelden comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decorum

Alistair wakes up to her sliding into their bed. He knows it’s her because her smell surrounds him and the bed hadn’t smelled like her in over a year.

“Maker’s breath, I’ve missed you.” He clutches his queen to him, finally home and safe in his arms.

“I have news,” she manages to whisper before his mouth is on hers.

“Later,” he replies. “If you thought I could focus on Grey Warden matters right now, you have severely underestimated how much I have missed you.”

“If I thought you could focus on anything other than getting reaquainted, I would have worn smalls to bed.”

It is only much later that she finally has enough breath to share her news.

“I found a cure,” she murmurs against his shoulder. The sky is turning from black to purple. Sounds of the castle waking up become more noticeable. He wasn’t sure how well he was going to rule an entire country on only a few hours of sleep, but it was so worth it.

“To the Calling?” he asks.

“To the Blight,” she replies. He can only blink owlishly at her and she laughs at his expression.

It was going to be rough, she told him, and she’s suspended all of his courtly duties for the week, but she had found it. Not just a way for them to removed the tainted blood that would forever tie them to the Wardens, but a way to clear out the Blight from Thedas.

She explained it with lots of complicated words and elaborate hand gestures but in the end, it boiled down to, “It’s an antidote. A true antidote. As long as a creature is still alive, they can have the Taint removed.”

It wasn’t _that_ simple, of course. If a creature was too blighted, the antidote would just kill them nearly instantly. Darkspawn just fell at their feet now with one scratch from a weapon coated in the stuff. The Wardens and the Legion of the Dead could take archers down to the Deep Roads and have them cleared out in almost no time, without even needing to get that close.

But they could possibly prevent the 6th Blight from happening altogether. And no longer would anyone in Thedas have to worry about watching a loved one survive a Darkspawn attack only to watch them die because of the poison infecting their blood.

“You’re going to want to die,” she warned him when they prepared the cure for him. “It’s plunging every ounce of the Taint from your body. It will feel like the Joining only for much longer and much worse. We have 10 years worth of the Taint in our body, and it won’t go without a fight.”

In the end, she undersold it. Alistair had never been more miserable in his life. He spend three solid days consumed by fever dreams. He was sure that he had dreamed everything in his life. He was still that neglected boy sleeping with the dogs. No, he was back in the chantry and Duncan never came for him. No, this was his Joining and he was failing it. No, he was back on the roof of Fort Drakon and he was watching her strike the killing blow, but Morrigan had lied. This was going to kill the one person he has ever loved and he was powerless to stop it. He was trapped and people were holding him back, holding him down, telling him to endure. But how could he endure this? She was dying and he was dying and he wasn’t doing anything to stop it.

When he finally came out of it, he was shaky and weak, but he was alive and so was she, right beside him, holding his hand. There were tears in her eyes when he said her name. Relieved, he understood, that he finally recognized her and that the worst had passed.

She let out a choked and watery laugh when he said he was desperately craving some Oswick cheddar.

She had to leave two days after that.

“Someone has to take the cure up to Weisshaupt,” she told him. “And I can give them our formal resignations while I’m up there since neither of us are even technically Grey Warden’s anymore.”

“I know you’ll be fine, but I still wish you could just stay here.” They had said their tearful goodbyes the night before, letting them have their moment of humanity in private and away from the prying eyes of the Court. But even though she said he had to maintain the cool façade of a leader, he was pretty sure he was failing.

“This will be the easiest trip I have ever taken,” she said, “because when I get home, we’ll truly be free from our obligations to the world.”

“Except from ruling a whole country.”

“Yes, except from that.”

He watched her march off with her small contingent of Wardens, the recipe for the Taint antidote, and a large stockpile of it already made. Even though she said it only took a small drop to take down a Hurlock Alpha in a matter of seconds, he still worried that she didn’t have enough. They were so close to finally having this part of their lives done with, but he felt like he was still that boy who had his own desires ignored and his dreams taken away from him.

In the end, she lied. It was not the easiest trip of her life. She began suspecting trouble a few weeks out from Denerim. About a week away from Weisshaupt and her suspicions were confirmed. On her return trip home, she was forced into a carriage, delaying her progress even more. It took her two months longer than she had said she would be.

Alistair was a worried mess. He knew she was delayed, but the waiting was horrid and communication brief and stilted from her constant travel. It wasn’t until the raven came with a note saying she was a day away that the knot that had lived in his chest for the past two years finally start to loosen, just a little.

The whole Court turned out to welcome home their Queen. Alistair hated it. He wanted to keep her all to himself and not have all of the propriety of a king in front of his subjects. No slinking naked into their bed this time. If she was coming home for good, it would be like a queen and not some thief in the night. Or so she had told him in her letter.

Still, he forgot all about the way thing were done when he handed her out of her carriage, shooing off the footman. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her senseless for all the Court to see.

Caught up in his longing for her, he had missed the source of her delay, covered as it was by her travelling cloak.

But when they finally parted for air, that was when he noticed the extra distance it had taken to reach her mouth, blocked as he was by a rounded and pronounce bump where once her flat abdomen was.

He just stared at her, with wonder and awe and joy and so many other emotions he couldn’t even name. “You’re-?” he finally managed to choke out.

When she nodded, Alistair decided that court decorum could go rot in the Black City for all he cared. He swept her into his arms again, kissing his wife with abandon, while joyful tears streamed down their faces.

**Author's Note:**

> A silly little drabble I’ve had in the back of my head. I’m actually rather proud of myself for keeping all signifying markers out of the fic (Something I can almost never do). Personally, I view this as Canon!Cousland but it doesn’t have to be. This is also a bit of a departure from my normal style. I’m not 100% that this works, but I rather like it. Totally unbeta’ed so I’m sure there are a thousand tiny, stupid mistakes I’ve missed.


End file.
